We Are Pirates: A Novel (8 page)

“What part of Jamaica are you from?”

Manny shook his head. “Haiti.”

“Isn’t that—”

“It’s a different country, white girl.”

“I know that,” Gwen said, though she hadn’t been one hundred percent on that. From around a corner Gwen could hear a loud, scraped voice saying “Raisin! Raisin! Raisin! Raisin!,” each time like it was starting all over, and she rounded that corner, and she was led through that door, and “Raisin! Raisin! Raisin!” was what he was saying when they found each other.

“Errol,” Manny said.

He looked up from his chair, which he had moved closer to the sun. Gwen could see its wake across the bad rug. He had a plastic tray across his knees like an airline passenger, and on the tray was an overturned bowl and a small mountain of cereal he was picking through. The raisins were isolated in a line, as if they’d soon be marched off. Gwen was relieved. It was not crazy, to pick out the raisins, she hoped it wasn’t.

“Cereal for lunch is ridiculous,” he said to Manny, as if an argument were already in progress. “You’re fired.”

“You asked for cereal,” Manny said, “and I don’t work for you.”

“For breakfast, I thought it was. Curse me.”

“This is Gwen, Errol.”

“I know who it is.”

“She’s volunteered to be your companion.”

“I know who it is,” Errol said again. “Leave me alone if you’re not going to help.”

This was, to Gwen, a very perfect sentence, just the thing she thought all the time. Manny backed out of the room and they sized each other up. The air between them felt awkward and managed, as if they were estranged, instead of being strangers. Gwen felt the familiar jitter, buzzy and smiley, of being next to old people. Her mother didn’t like it either, she realized. That’s why she’d chosen this for Gwen’s punishment.

“How’d you get here?” Errol said finally.

“My mom drove me.”

“No, I mean which way did you take?”

“We just took, um, Hill Street.”

“Hill Street, no fucking kidding.”

“Uh-huh.” Was swearing against the rules? She had signed that thing.

“I mean I can’t believe they called it Hill Street.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It is an insult,” Errol said, with mild fury. “I guess I’ll go my own way.”

“I guess so,” Gwen said. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means, what do they teach you in school? Are you here for some kind of project?”

“No, punishment.”

“Good, I’m glad. I don’t like the school project kids. You know you’re going to die when they come at you with a tape recorder.
Tell us about the Navy.
You want to know about the Navy?”

“No.”

“Good. Are you here for some kind of project?”

“Punishment,” Gwen said again, but felt bad about it and so added, “I’m your companion,” which made it worse, but Errol didn’t notice or forgot that he did notice.

“What’d you do?”

“Stole stuff.”

Errol was putting a pinch of cereal in his mouth, and now he coughed long and hard at it. Gwen took a step toward him, but no more. He coughed and coughed, but Gwen did not do anything and could not think what to do. “As I live and breathe,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“What did you steal?”

“Candy, mostly.”

“That’s just what I’d steal. Did you steal it from here?”

“No, from a drugstore.”

“What did you steal?”

“Candy, mostly.”

Errol stared at her for a moment and then grinned. “From where?”

“The drugstore.”

“Did I ask you that?”

“It’s okay.”

“I have a problem with my memory.”

“That’s okay.”

“It’s not a big problem. I worry about it, though. What’s that river?”

“What river?”

“The big one.”

“Mississippi?”

“Not the Amazon, the one in Egypt.”

“The Nile.”

“That’s it.
Se-nile.
I made it up to remember. I worry about it, though. I have a problem with my memory. But I used to remember everything, even when I was a kid. What do you think about that?”

Gwen could not think about that. Errol surely had always been old. Gwen could not imagine him younger than he was. “I guess it’s funny how life turns out?” she tried.

“Not last I checked,” Errol said with a snort. “Raisin! Raisin! Want to help me?”

Gwen smiled. She felt as if something, a balloon, was untied from her and flitting toward the ceiling. She took another step forward and found a raisin.

“Raisin,” she said.

“Raisin!”

“Raisin!”

“Raisin! Do you really want to know about the Navy?”

“No.”

“Good. Raisin! I hate talking into the microphones they bring around here. When I have something on my mind I write the newspaper. I write them every day.”

“Raisin! I know—Peggy told me.”

“That Peggy’s fat. I don’t like her.”

“Me neither.”

“
Don’t
,” he said deliberately, “
don’t like her.
” Gwen started to answer, but Errol lifted his fist and slammed it down into the tray. Cereal went everywhere, and the bowl bounced off a wall to spin on the floor, clattering, clattering, clattering, grumbling to a standstill. They looked at each other.

“Well,” he said, as if he were telling her something that she of course knew already, “I’m not going to do it for you.”

There was something about the quiet, perhaps because of the crash before it, that stung Gwen’s eyes, but she knelt down to try and sweep up. “You don’t have to do that!” Errol barked. “They have a staf
f
! You’re a companion, right?”

“Yes,” Gwen said, still on the ground, and Errol’s eyes slowly fell on her and smiled.

“I know you,” he said.

“Yes—Gwen,” Gwen said.

“That’s it,” he said. “I don’t like this place.”

“Yeah.”

He opened his fist and one last raisin knocked its way down.
Raisin!
“Keep busy and keep your mind off your problems.
Make friends!
That’s not going to keep my mind off my wife. She’s dead.”

“Of course not,” Gwen said, getting mad at whoever, Peggy probably, had told him this. “Of course it wouldn’t. Friends don’t help.”

“No, they do not,” Errol said, with a fierce nod like he knew all about Naomi and her daggery ways. “Do you know? Do you know how she died?”

Gwen said she did not know.

“I didn’t talk about her for two years after. Nobody likes to hear bad things. It was about a year.
Can’t hoit
, she said. Do you know that joke? Those were her last words. We were joking when we met. We laughed like you wouldn’t believe.
Can’t hoit!
Those were her last words. They sent this lady at the hospital. Vera put her trust in her. Did I tell you this?”

“No.”

“Dying in the hospital, so much pain. You wouldn’t believe it. Like a dam breaking. They gave her everything.
Can’t hoit!
she always said. And then this lady . . . ”

This lady, as far as Gwen could tell, came to the hospital and sat at Vera’s side. “Picture a trampoline,” this lady said, holding the hand of Errol’s wife, Vera. “Imagine that you’re on a trampoline, up and down, up and down, up and down.” The woman’s voice was a traffic drone, lulling in its irritating pitch. Vera had been in pain for a long time. “You’re jumping up and down on this trampoline, up and down, up and down. And now, Vera, now why don’t you get off the trampoline? Why don’t you get off for a while?” This lady worked for the hospital. They paid her to do this, to walk into people’s rooms and talk them off the grit and jar of staying alive, the pain with each bounce. “Why don’t you get off for a while?” She died just hours later. They killed her, those murderers, those terrible people with their smiling ladies.

“If any
man
dared that,” Errol said, with a bit of froth, “I’d smite him by thunder, all right. By thunder I would. So they sent a woman to kill her, while the doctors went about their business as usual.
Can’t hoit!
It is an insult.”

“I know.”

“We were joking when we met.”

“You said. What was the joke?”

Errol wasn’t listening. His eyes were very clear, very direct, completely focused on some lost punch line that nonetheless made him grin. Gwen waited in the nice space that had suddenly arrived.

“Thank you,” Errol said quietly. “A nice memory is a nice thing.”

“Sure,” Gwen said.

“I don’t like it here,” he said, and then with both hands fished into one pocket. His fingers fought for a while and then handed Gwen something.

“Can you,” he said, “please, mail this for me?”

The envelope had SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE written on it, nothing more. “Sure, of course,” Gwen said. “That’s easy.” She could mail these every day. There was a mailbox right in front of the drugstore. They had a sign near the register about Lucky Seniors. Lucky Seniors receive our Lucky Senior discount. Let us know if you are a Lucky Senior. The awful words they throw at you. Gwen wanted to snarl at them; her hands itched to take whatever things they didn’t want you to have.

“Did you really steal things?” Errol said. “Did I ask you that already, or somebody else?”

“No, I stole things,” Gwen said.

Errol laughed. “Tell me all of it,” he said. “I want a complete account of all the treasure.”

“Really?”

“I’d be most happy.”

“It was mostly candy.”

“That’s just what I’d steal. You want to read to me?”

“Sure, okay.”

Errol pointed to a saggy shelf near where the bowl had fallen. Each step Gwen took toward it was a crunch of cereal.
Treasure Island. Marauders. The Dark Schooner. Mutiny! Piracy! The Aquarians. The Sea-Wolf. Captain Blood. Captain Black. Captain of the Black Flag. Seaward Sinister. Mardi. The Darkest Wind. Treasure Seekers. The Raid upon the Waves. White-Jacket. The Tempest. The Sea Witch.
She had never heard of any of them. There were lots more. Gwen dubiously took out a book of poetry; old people probably liked poetry.

“I don’t like it here,” he said when she stood up again.

“I’m mailing your letter,” Gwen said. “I’m going to mail that letter to the paper, Errol.”

“It’s not a big problem. I worry about it, though. What’s that river?”

“Senile,” Gwen said very quietly, but Errol drooped even at the whisper of it. The sun seethed down on the back of his bald head and the strange curl of a bulge on his neck, which was pillowed with white hairs. Gwen hadn’t expected it would be like this, but of course it would be. Even with a happy childhood, or
naive
is the word Gwen thinks for it, you’d slowly start to be embarrassed by everything in the world, and eventually the weight of all these things, years and years of burdens and rebukes, would just collapse in your lap like a bag of heavy water, and your shoulders would sag from carrying all of it, and of course your shirt would be too small, plaid, buttoned too high and too tight, and of course your shoes would be ugly in some way that was demanded of you by the keepers of your prison hallways, and of course your face, Errol’s face, would show all this, old in the land of the free, old and reined in with people punished to be your companion. These people, all of these people like Errol and herself, with their happiness stolen, every scrap of it, cast off with nothing they wanted. Surely there was a way to steal some back. She opened the book.

“Oh captain, my captain,” she read uncertainly.

“No, no, no,” Errol said, pointing at the pirates on the shelf. “Read me something else.”

An easy way to broadcast a hero, Leonard Steed told him once, was to have the hero do something nice for a child right away, so the audience can see he’s a good guy. The Belly Jefferson interview opens with Belly telling a story about teaching a kid the guitar—a story that was not part of the original interview, but one Phil Needle added to the show to make the heroism authentic. Phil Needle swirled honey on his daughter’s toast before bumping it over to her. Gwen was staring out the window and biting into an apple. She was wearing a blue shirt with a green design, gray jeans, something with a hood tied around her waist, and some boots he had never seen before that Marina kept glaring at.

Gwen put the wounded apple down on the table. The bites were perfect.

“Are you going to eat that, Gwen?”

Gwen scowled at her mother and then shoved the whole toast into her mouth like she did. It looked like she was eating a sleeping bag. Her hair was tucked safely behind her ear, but what else was safe, squirreled away? Today, June whatever-it-was, Phil Needle was flying down to Los Angeles to seize what was his to be seized. But he worried about leaving Gwen. School was out and she had nothing to do but a punishment Phil Needle did not like to think about. Without swimming—why had she quit, could she just tell him that?—they didn’t even spend time in the same body of water. With Marina it was worse. Last night they’d raged at each other until Gwen had stalked upstairs, where Phil Needle was hiding and trimming his nails. She had a pen in her hand, and before he could even look at her, she’d grabbed his wrist and written I HATE HER and was gone again with that music, Tortuga, turned up loud and muffled in her room. He’d scrubbed and scrubbed at it and there it was, still bruised on his skin. It looked like he’d had his hand stamped at a club.